The present invention generally relates to Trusted Computing Group (TCG) domain. More specifically, the present invention relates to verifying authenticity of an application executing on a computing-platform operating in TCG domain.
In a TCG domain, the security state of a computing-platform is attested by using Trusted Platform Module (TPM). TPM supports secure booting and secure reporting of an operational state of the computing-platform. At boot time a Core Root of Trust Measurement (CRTM) computes a hash of itself and of the BIOS and a configuration of the computing-platform, which corresponds to the BIOS and one or more hardware applications executing on the computing-platform. Thereafter, the BIOS computes a hash of a loader of the computing-platform. Then, the loader computes the hash of an operating system loaded on the computing-platform. Additionally, the operating system computes hash of the applications executing on the operating system. After computing each of the aforementioned hashes, a concatenated hash corresponding to each of the aforementioned hashes is stored in one or more Platform Configuration Registers (PCRs) of the TPM. The concatenated hash can be, verified by a verifier to determine authenticity of an operational state of the computing-platform. However, security state of the computing-platform also depends on content of configuration files and output of the applications executing on the computing-platform, which can be tampered by an intruder application.
In conventional applications, software programs are used to verify authenticity of an application and its output. However, the software programs can be tampered by an intruder application executing on the computing-platform.